A Critical Perspective on Drug Selling in the United States: Can Transposition of the Dutch Model Succeed?

Abstract

This is the first study of drug selling in the United States that attempts squarely and solely to place the problem of drug dealing within a “critical” criminological perspective. The drug issue is placed in historical and cross-national context; emphasized are a fundamental American ambivalence toward the issue of drugs and their control and the resultant cyclical quality of approaches to that control. “Left realism,” that branch of critical criminology deemed most theoretically and practically applicable to the drug issue, is explicated and compared with traditional perspectives within the sociology of crime. A “crime as work” thesis is developed; its essential tenets are explained, and remedial suggestions that flow logically from the thesis are highlighted. Emphasized is the unlikely prospect that the Dutch model, against which U.S. policy is compared, could profitably be transposed to resolution of the U.S. drug problem.